(Season 1) EP: 003 - The Other Side

Life is fleeting—a fact Rhett learned early in life. So, when he and his wife Valerie bring their daughter, Meadow, and two of her friends along on a trip to Mexico, all he wants is one last trip to bond with his daughter before she heads off to college.

But things take a dramatic turn when the family decides to take an excursion into ancient Mayan territory—a territory now controlled by a vicious cartel. As the group moves from one destination to the next, their bus is ambushed. Their tour guide is murdered before their eyes, and they only have a narrow shot at escape.

Racing through the Mexican jungle, Rhett and his family are pursued by the cartel for days. With the threat of death right behind them, they have no choice but to venture so deep into the forest they may never find their way out.

Long after the gunshots have fallen silent, the family stumbles upon an abandoned cenote. At last, they feel a moment of relief as they are finally able to ease their aching bodies and rest, if only for a moment. They take comfort in each others’ company, ignoring the traumatic events of the past few days, and set their sights to the future.

When they finally make it out of the forest, they are rescued by another tour group traveling along the road. But what seems like the end of a nightmare is only the beginning of another, more terrifying dream.

Back home in California, Meadow becomes ill. She’s burning up with a terrible fever, one that she can’t seem to shake, and as things take a turn for the worse, Rhett has no choice but to call 911. As he and his wife help load their daughter into the ambulance, they too become ill and lose consciousness.

When Rhett awakens, he finds himself in a strange place. His home is the same, but his family isn’t—and neither is the rest of the world. As he ventures out into the city, the differences between this strange place and his own home in LA couldn’t be more stark. But it isn’t until he reaches a welcome sign saying he’s in a place called Alta California that he realizes just how different things really are.

Lost in a new world, Rhett is determined to find his family. He loves them more than life itself, and he refuses to believe that they’re lost to him. But just as he begins to sort out this strange new world, he wakes up in his life—his real life. According to doctors, he’s been in a coma for a week, and his wife and daughter, as well as her friends, are still stuck in theirs.

Now, every time Rhett closes his eyes, he finds himself back in Alta California. By day, he struggles with the ramifications of his inability to sleep, slowly losing control of his body and mind, while simultaneously trying to find a reason for his dreams. By night, he travels across Alta California, stealing whatever he needs to survive in a world he still doesn’t quite understand.

Convinced that if he can find Valerie and Meadow in his dream world, he can somehow save them in life, Rhett is willing to go to the ends of this new earth to locate them. Until the man in black appears. The man in black warns Rhett that he doesn’t belong in Alta California, that he needs to leave and never return. And Rhett would willingly follow those orders, if not for one problem—he doesn’t know how.

Assisted in the waking world by his sister-in-law, Maeve, Rhett begins to uncover the truth. The dream world isn’t a dream at all, it’s an alternate reality. And the man in black is an Estari, one of the sacred protectors of the many worlds across the universe.

But knowing the truth hasn’t helped save his family. In fact, Rhett is positive that they’re lost somewhere outside of Alta California, and he has no idea how to get them back. As his body continues to deteriorate in the root world, Rhett struggles with insurmountable grief at the thought of losing his wife and daughter, all while knowing that if he doesn’t solve the riddle soon, he too is going to die.

But inside of him is a fragile, brittle hope. It’s this hope, and his unwavering love and devotion to his family, that propels him forward in the search for some kind of cure. Along the way he befriends the man in black, Mathias, and with his guidance discovers that there are others that can travel through these parallel realities.

As Rhett comes closer to a solution that might save not only himself, but his family as well, his health takes a devastating turn, and he falls into another coma—one he’ll never wake from.

Trapped inside Alta California without any way of getting back to his root life, Rhett resolves to make as much noise as possible so that Mathias—an avid follower of rules that prevent him from discussing alternate realities—has no choice but to intervene. When the Estari finally does, he offers Rhett a choice, one that will help him save his family once and for all: become an Estari and travel the realities, or be lost to Alta California forever.

Rhett knows the life of an Estari is cursed. It is an unnatural life, one that spans eternity, and once you become an Estari you must forsake everyone and everything else in your life. You can never go home, or see your loved ones again. Once you become Estari, your entire existence is devoted to the world you’ve been given to safeguard.

Now, Rhett has to make a choice. Become Estari and save his family, while also losing them forever, or stay in Alta California and try to find another way. In the end, Rhett recognizes that there isn’t really any choice to be made. Life is fleeting, a fact Rhett knows very well, but he would do anything to save the lives of his family, even it means never seeing them again.